


Saints and Martyrs

by argle_fraster



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Queen Nadia's rule is not easy, littered with difficulties, and pillars come in unusual shapes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU using the idea that saving Crono altered him to where he doesn't remember the others, really; people have played with the concept of him not coming back "right" before. Also AU, technically, since Cross made canon Guardia falling in 1005 AD, and I disregard that.

She is the only daughter of a king, born to the crown. Her royalty is her blood, her throne undisputed. Her mother died when she was very young, and so she is the sole heir. She is beloved by her father, who clings to her ever tighter after her mother’s passing, and she is adored by the people, because she is their sunshine. She is their princess, their star, their bright glimmer of hope they look to as they go about their daily lives and live in peace and prosperity.

She does not know how to deal with this. She doesn’t know why she must live life as dictated by her advisors, by her father- by the past and how things have always been done. She doesn’t want to sit and sew while she watches other children play in the yard, with their laughter floating in to her ears. She doesn’t understand why she is kept away from the world that reveres her.

Nadia decides at a very early age that she doesn’t want any of it. She doesn’t want to be loved if she can’t make connections with other people; she doesn’t want to be adored if she can’t see the faces of those who think of her. She despises being cut off from the very kingdom she is blood-bound to rule- it is unfair and cruel to keep her behind closed doors, like a prison cell.

She vows to leave and see the world. She vows, while hunched over books with scholars beating down her back to learn things they call ‘classic’ and ‘necessary’, that she will run away and see everything that has been denied to her.

\-----

It is ironic, then, that she ends up exactly where she started; alone in the throne room, with the Chancellor standing nearby should she need him, and the soldiers guarding the large double doors. She wonders if she had thought, back when she was young and naïve, that her father had prepared her for rule in the best way he knew how, in the way he had been prepared. In truth, he had loved her very much, more than she would ever know, more than she ever acknowledged while he was alive. Sometimes the grief of it keeps her up at night. Sometimes she wakes with nightmares that he died thinking she hated him.

She sees Crono sometimes, in town. In an odd way, it doesn’t hurt anymore; not like it had on the peak, when she whispered his name between elated tears and couldn’t understand why his eyes were so lifeless when they turned to her. His mother is still cordial, and sometimes brings baked goods over to share- Nadia appreciates this, because it means his mother doesn’t blame her for what happened. She didn’t know that by altering the fabric of life and death as they had, he would never be the same.

Crono will greet her as the queen, as the ruler- with a bow, and a smile. Sometimes he will ask how she is doing; sometimes he is more lucid, and will look at her like he remembers her, or their travels, and she’ll see a wisp of the old Crono back. But it is gone quickly, fleeting, like most things, and she knows it is better not to dwell. Their time was so short as it was; lingering on it seems to work against her happiness in the long run no matter what.

It is just that she didn’t expect to be alone on her throne.

She never thought she would be alone.

\------

She feels the loneliness more keenly when there is a threat, and in her reign, there is no shortage of them. The first is only three years after her ascension- from Porre, the military country growing rapidly strong and aggressive. Their desires to expand their own empire conflict with her wishes to keep her own from fear and prosecution.

She meets with her advisors for long hours, when her heart is heavy with the possibilities of impending invasion, and her mind sick with worry for her people.

“What can we do?” she asks, with dry lips.

“Fight,” her counselors tell her. They look far more confident than she feels. “We fight. We will not lose to Porre. Guardia has not lost in centuries, and we will not do it now, certainly not to an upstart nation looking only for their own gain.”

Personal greed- isn’t that what all countries were originally made from?

“How?” she asks next.

“An army,” comes the answer. “Summon a standing army. We defend the south bridge Zenan with the majority of our troops; it is the single greatest threat, and Porre’s biggest entry point into our borders.”

“And of the sea?” she asks, weary of the talk already; it has only just begun. “What of that?”

The Navy, of course. The Navy she will have to build, for there was no need of it in peacetime. The Navy she will finance from the castle armory, with scraps of gold and heirlooms auctioned off at knockdown prices. Nadia knows how war works- what she didn’t see firsthand whilst traveling through time, she learned in the books she was forced to study.

She leaves the meeting with a headache, and a terrible feeling in her gut.

\------

It is three nights later, in the dead of midnight when not even the crickets make noise, that the soul-wrenching sound of glass breaking wakes her from sleep. She has not needed her reflexes in a very long time- not since sleeping under the stars around a campfire, at least- and it takes her longer than she would like to be up and alert, crouching on the side of her four-poster bed with the only sharp object on her bedside table in her hand. The letter opener is barely enough to draw blood, and she clings to it blindly.

Her heart is in her throat, thumping wildly, adrenaline on overload. Everything sounds menacing.

An assassination attempt; why didn’t they see it sooner? She has no heirs, no siblings. There are no further claims on the throne of Guardia, and she has been foolish not to think that Porre would stoop to such a thing. With her gone, they can take the country easily. With her gone, there is nothing to stand in their way.

The realization fills her with rage. It is her country; she was born to her. She will not let them take it without a fight.

The door to her bedchambers opens with a loud crash, a startling thud, and Nadia takes a quick glance of the assailant before launching herself at him. He is not expecting the attack, nor the opener lodged in his side. He grunts in pain, slumps over, and ceases to move. She is breathless with fear and victory, the taste bitter, and she knows better than to think the threat over.

They would never invade the castle with just one man.

She flees the room, seeking- she doesn’t even know what she’s seeking, only that she has to leave. She has to find safety in the a world where she is almost sure there is none; none for her, anyway. She gave up stability when she was born royal. Her foot hits the wall and one toe throbs, and she ignores it, ignores everything. Her hands grapple for the door handle to leave the hall, and she hears another crash, another arrival.

They are coming for her.

The opener is gone, stuck in the gut of the first, and she spins around the corridor, looking for anything else she can use to fend them off. All she can find is a vase- undoubtedly valuable and old- she grabs it anyway, readying to throw it.

The second assailant comes through the door and she freezes. Her reflexes are nothing compared to what they used to be, when she could land a bolt from her crossbow within moments of seeing an enemy. Now she is just a scared woman alone in a darkened hallway holding plaster between her hands.

By the time she throws the vase, it is too late; he has already seen it, and dodged it, and is moving towards her still. She can see the blade in his hand glinting in the low candlelight, and even if she couldn’t, she would have known it was there. Even as she falls backwards, fingers grasping for anything to keep her upright, she thinks- is this it? Is this the way to die?

Then there is another crash, and the assailant is down, and the lightning is so bright in the shadows that it burns her eyes and she must look away. She doesn’t need to check that the man is dead; she can smell the burning flesh. There is a hand on her arm, gloved and rough.

“Come,” her savior tells her, and Nadia obeys. He has not yet led her wrong.

They flee not to the throne room, which she knows would be a tactical error, but to the prison tower. Running across the bridge, exposed under the bright light of the moon, allows her to see the figures moving beneath her, in the brush outside the castle. Even the moat has done little to stop their advance. But she is proud- her guards are fighting, fighting to the death, to protect her castle and her kingdom. For her.

She briefly thinks of Crono, and how he used to fight for her, and immediately pushes the thought aside. He does not remember her anymore. She should not remember him.

They stop, and Nadia is short of breath. She is too fearful to be ashamed.

“How many?” she asks.

“A hundred,” comes the answer. “Maybe more. Over the ridge.”

“The bridge?” she inquires. They were too late in securing it.

“The fiends will have it within the hour for you.”

It is good news, and she is afraid to latch onto it. She checks her person for damage, but is unharmed. In the old days, she could have run across fields without tiring, and now she cannot run to her own prison without her lungs burning.

“How did you get here?” she asks, finally, the question she knows he must be expecting. She doesn’t ask why- in a way, she is afraid to know.

“The Gate,” Magus responds. He is intently watching the scene below. It is only then that Nadia notices the Imps in the trees, and the Owls in the shadows. He has commanded them all for her, and with their help, Guardia is winning. She doesn’t ask him to elaborate.

“Thank you,” she says. It’s simple, and for what he’s done, not nearly enough. But he’s never been good at receiving gratitude, and she does not want to make him uncomfortable now.

“Watch the southern border,” he tells her. “They will continue for the Zenan bridge until they cannot move any longer- keep it, and you will face only those of them that can get across the channel without being noticed, and those that can slip in from the sea. The mountains to the north will protect you. Secure the ports.”

She doesn’t ask him how he knows this; it’s obvious. And she is grateful for the support.

“I will,” she promises. He slips into the shadows, and is gone.

\-------

Porre yields after five months, after they have lost regiments fighting for the Zenan bridge, and Nadia accepts their surrender with conditionals to terminate magical experimentation and agree to be under Guardia’s rule until a new system of control can be agreed upon by both parties.

Nadia expects to feel relief, but all she feels is tired- not four years into her reign, and she cannot find the peace she grew up in. She wonders if it is because of her, and her soft hand, that these things are happening. It haunts her.

She sits in her bedchamber, not sleeping, watching the stars from her open windows, and is not surprised when the shadows move behind her.

“The fiends want recognition,” he says, easily, without preamble. “For their assistance.”

“Yes,” she comments. “They would.”

“Rewarding them will bring about new troubles for those who despite fiend-support. You may face resistance from the towns frequently attacked; Choras will fight.”

“Yes,” she says again.

She still doesn’t ask why he appeared to save her. Why he came from a Gate no longer used, no longer accessed, knowing the right time in which she would need him. Perhaps, in another lifetime, she would not have needed the help, for she would have had Crono.

Such thoughts are useless.

“I will,” she sighs. “I will give them what they want. They saved us, and they deserve what comes with that.”

He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know if he even has an opinion on the matter.

“Keep an eye on the Elder of Choras,” is all he says, before disappearing into the night once more.

\------

Two years later, and he is right. Choras is in open rebellion with Guardia’s policies- ‘light-handed, fiend-loving’, they call them. Degrading to those who have spent their lives defending their homes and families from the murderous beasts, they say.

Guardia has Medina on their side, but it is not enough. Nadia faces war.

Her advisors are tight-lipped and white-faced, and the confidence they had only years ago has faded. Perhaps with reality, perhaps with acceptance.

“It might not be the best idea,” they tell her.

“But it’s right,” she argues. “It’s right, and you know that. As long as we treat the fiends as second-class citizens, they will continue to act like them. And the time has come to end the fued between us.”

“With war.”

It’s true- it’s what it’s come to. War.

“With war,” she says, and they cannot argue, for she is queen. They are learned men, advisors, and their opinions matter, but she is the law of the land, and they must obey what she decides. She wishes her father were there, because she sorely misses his guidance. She hopes he would do the same as she is doing- she thinks he would have tried to make things right.

Nadia can do little more.

She allows fiends to join the ranks of Guardia’s army, and now when she passes the prison entrance, two imps stand at attention, with badges on their chests. She is oddly proud, even though she had fought many of their kind while trying to rid the world of Lavos. She felt it then, and she still feels it now; when races and tribes join together, there is something there. Something powerful. Something- something meaningful.

If she can do nothing else, she can leave a legacy of trying to do something meaningful. And perhaps the world will be better off for it.

\------

He is waiting in her bedchambers when she returns one day, after greeting and blessing the army amassed from Truce. She gives him one glance and prepares for bed as usual, taking the crown from her hair and setting it on the armoire.

“Tea, please,” she begs of the maid, and while she waits, she sits in her chair, feeling heavy.

“They may not be enough,” Magus warns.

“What won’t?” she asks, eyes closed.

“The army. The men. You should gather the able-bodied from Porre.”

She opens one eye at him, but does not respond.

“It is under your jurisdiction still,” he presses. “They are bound to you through the treaty, and as such should be considered under the draft. You will have enough if you call upon them; without them, Choras will overpower you.”

The maid returns with the tea on a gilded platter, and Nadia reaches for it greedily as the door closes. In a flash, he is at her side, and the tea is on the floor, splattered in an arc.

“Why-“ she begins, and does not need to finish. The liquid is already burning a smoking hole in the carpet. She stares at it for a long time, bile rising in the back of her throat.

“That is the second time you’ve saved my life,” she says weakly.

“Threats will come from everywhere now,” Magus warns. He looks serious, mouth and brow set in lines. “You are not defending against an invading army this time. You are trying to change what has been a mindset and way of life for centuries.”

Nadia sags back against the cushions, drained.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she says truthfully, and just saying the words is difficult; they clump in her throat, choking her. “I don’t- I think I’m failing.”

He doesn’t say anything, and in truth, she doesn’t want him to. Sympathy does not become him. It’s not who is he, or what he does, or how he’s wired. It’s not what she wants from him. But he does allow her the time she needs to gather her wits again and calm herself enough to send for a guard and inquire into the maid.

Once the investigation is under way, she climbs into bed and pulls the covers up to her chin, like she did when she was a child. Like she did when she thought the blankets could keep all the frightening and dangerous things of the world away from her.

“I will call on Porre tomorrow,” she whispers, to the darkness. She wants to ask him to stay until she falls asleep, but refrains.

She doesn’t need to- he does anyway.

\------

The war with Choras will go down in history, as the war with her own confidante did 400 years prior. It is bitter, and bloody, and even she knows that choosing a side is hard. It isn’t a matter of right and wrong, it’s a matter of feelings, of teachings, of ingrained prejudices so deep that a sword cannot shake them. Even winning will not change people’s minds.

A year, and there is no end in sight. A year’s worth of battles and there’s no respite looming on the distance. Troops are hard to motivate without spoils obvious to them.

He finds her one afternoon on her terrace, with strategic plans on parchment laid out in front of her. Her soldiers are marching on the continent to the west, and sometimes she still feels the pang of longing to be there with them. To feel the rush of adrenaline, and the copper taste of fear.

“I can command them,” he says.

She lets out a long breath, slowly, and stares down at the X’s and arrows drawn on the paper.

“I know,” she replies.

She knows he will go if she asks him to. She just isn’t sure if she wishes it.

“Do not worry about the fiend’s loyalty,” he says. “You have won them simply by initiating this. It is their honor they are fighting to reclaim, and you have given them the means to do it. Don’t worry about them.”

“Are you telling me I should be worried about my own troops?”

“Yes.” He is blunt. “Some feel the same way that Choras does.”

“And some always will,” she says grimly. He moves to place a hand on her shoulder. It is the first time has touched her without a need, the first time he has willingly offered comfort rather than service or insight. She leans into it subconsciously, allowing herself a moment to accept it for what it is. It has been a long time since she felt the warmth of anyone else; too long. She fears she has grown hard without it.

“In doing this, you are allowing those things to change,” he says. “In time, the people’s hearts will change, too.”

“I do not wish to be blamed for this,” she whispers. “I don’t want this death around my neck. It’s like a noose. And it’s everywhere, at my hand.”

His hand moves from her shoulder to her neck, brushing aside hair to gently settle there. It’s a very sensual gesture. He is offering, and she doesn’t know yet if she will accept. She trusts her own judgment these days; making decisions is not to be taken lightly anymore. But she lets her head loll back a bit, against his hand.

It is stable.

How she has yearned for that stability.

\-------

As the war continues to pick up, month after month, she makes a trip to Truce. She doesn’t have the intention of going to see Crono when she sets out from her door, but it is the way her feet take her, and so she does. His mother is glad to see her- she curtsies a lot, and rambles a bit while speaking, but Nadia knows she is honored by the visit.

Crono is seated at the table, peeling potatoes. He brightens when he sees her, and bows, like an excited child.

“Such an honor,” he says.

“Will you stay for dinner?” his mother asks.

“No,” Nadia replies, shaking her head. “I just came to see how you were doing.”

“Fine,” his mother says, and then, as if amending to be more correct in the face of royalty, “very fine! Very fine.”

“My friend Fritz has gone to war,” Crono shares. “He joined the army.”

Nadia remembers Fritz, and the potions he gave them. Perhaps now her actions have finally sentenced him truly to the guillotine.

“I’m sorry,” she says awkwardly, for lack of anything else to say.

“Oh, no!” Crono defends. “He’s glad to do it. We all are, for our queen.”

Nadia watches him cutting the vegetables. She used to see him as her protector; her knight. He used to be the man she thought would always defend her, would always be by her side. It was a long time ago, and she isn’t sure if it will ever fade away completely.

She ends up staying for dinner.

When she returns to the castle, she opens the doors to her balcony and leaves them ajar when she goes to sleep.

\------

It takes three nights for her gesture to be accepted; she wakes to weight settling on the edge of her mattress in the darkness, the familiar and comforting hum of insects outside. The moon is new, and there is little light, but she can feel him.

“Is it always like this?” she whispers. “Everything seemed so clear when we were trying to save the world. Just saying it sounds so hollow. Saving the world- what am I doing now?”

“Your best,” he replies. She laughs.

“If this is my best, pray we never have to see the worst,” she says, mirthlessly. Magus is silent for a moment.

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her. “Crono wasn’t your fault.”

There are tears on her cheeks that she doesn’t recall crying.

“You can’t know that,” she chokes out. “I wanted him back.”

“Everyone did,” he points out, and even though he’s right, it doesn’t lessen the pain. But crying over things long since passed was not what Nadia wished. She wipes the wetness from her face with the back of her hands.

“Will you go?” she asks.

“If you command it.”

She reaches for him in the darkness, palms finding the contours of his arms. He moves immediately towards her, and he’s warm- so warm. She’s been so cold for so long. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and tangles her hands in his hair.

“I command it,” she whispers, against his lips, and his weight is solid when it settles on her. Stable. Something she can draw strength from.

In the morning, he is gone, but she never expected him to stay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally wrote this over 5 years ago, and for some reason decided to go back and add more to it. Why? I have no idea. But this is the first thing that I have felt a drive to write in a very long time, so I'm hanging onto it.

In the weeks following, she has trouble sleeping. Dreams come to her full of blood and flames, and she can feel her skin cracking and peeling away from her bones until she wakes, a bitter taste on her tongue and her skin salty with terror. It becomes harder and harder to sleep, until she gives up on the action entirely; she has things she could be doing that are more useful than fighting the onslaught of nightmares, and not enough time in the day.

She spends days down in the catacombs of the royal vault, looking for anything that can be auctioned off to pay for the war she started. She finds arms and blades and shields, and that which can be melted down and reformed quickly is. There is a pang in her chest sometimes, when she is throwing away her heritage to the smiths with so little regard, but she knows she has gone too far down this path to turn back now.

One night, she finds an old vase with gold curled into the rim. It takes her a long moment to read the inscription on the side - _Leene, our beloved Queen and Lady, AD 597_.

Nadia stops, letting her fingers trace over the words.

She misses those days of certainty, but more than that, she misses what those times taught her. She is a descendent of Leene and she is squandering it all. She's lead her country into a war there is no end to, and has seen the destruction of her own people personally.

She is so agitated, so furious with her own failings, that she doesn't realize the ice that has blossomed out beneath her fingertips like a snowflake until it has covered half of the vase. Startled, she pulls her hand away, though her palm is still singing with cold.

She spends a long time staring down at the lines in her hand.

An idea has taken up root in her mind.

–

Because it has been so long, she feels strange simply sending a summons. Somehow, it would be rude, given all they have been through together. Her advisers are against her traveling without an escort, but Nadia insists, because this is her fight – and her past. As strange as it sounds, she feels uncomfortable allowing any others inside it.

She makes her way through Truce, towards the southern end where the old bridge still sits over the waves. It looks the same, and the smell of the sea-spray is strangely calming.

Lucca, for her part, does not seem surprised to see her.

“I knew you would come,” the other woman says, as if reading Nadia's mind, and opens the door further. “Eventually.”

“I should have come much earlier,” Nadia admits. Regret tastes like ash: the taste of their magics that used to mingle and hiss in the air together.

“You have other things to be doing,” Lucca says, and shakes her head while leading Nadia to a small table. It is covered in papers and tools, bits of ore and old, rusted pieces, and, at the bottom, a child's colorful drawing.

Nadia does not see the girl anywhere, but she knows she must be around. Lucca sent letters in the beginning, with messengers – they have slowed lately, and perhaps stopped, and Nadia has been too caught up in her own affairs to notice. But she used to give updates about what she was working on, and Nadia would sometimes read the notes at night after the council meetings and battle updates were done.

“I wish I could say that I came here just to see you,” Nadia starts, as Lucca hands her a mug of warm tea. It smells like cinnamon.

“Your Grace,” Lucca starts, and Nadia nearly chokes on the drink.

“Please,” she sputters, fingers catching drips of it that are slipping down her chin. “Lucca, please.”

Something softens on the other woman's face. “Marle, then.”

It's familiar and easy to hear that name again, and Nadia breathes it in for a moment.

Lucca sits on the opposite side of the table. “I don't expect you to come for social calls.”

“Perhaps you should,” Nadia muses. “That's what friends do, isn't it?”

“Not friends who are queens,” Lucca says, but she smiles, and the edges are soft and genuine. They sit for a long moment, both staring down at the vapors of the tea rising up into the air.

“Are you still working on your machines?” Nadia asks.

“Yes.”

Nadia fills her lungs with the scent of oil and metal grinding against itself, the smoky tang that she does not want to forget. She wants to remember this moment, before she uses it for something terrible.

“Do you think that you could...” she pauses, words catching in her throat. “Do you think you could design machines for weapons that could channel magic?”

Lucca's eyes over the table are sharp. “We are the only ones that can use magic.”

“The only _humans_ ,” Nadia corrects.

There is a very long silence – it's heavy, full of finality.

“Lucca?” Nadia prompts.

“Yes,” Lucca says. “Yes, I believe I could.”

–

She spends hours poring over reports of the war.

The casualties are high, and she tries to read every name, both human and fiend, until her eyes are bleary and her temples aching. The only solace is the knowledge that Choras and its allies are suffering the same amount, in the same numbers – and that such a thing can be considered comfort is horrifying if she thinks too hard on it.

She sells the remainder of what she can find in the vaults, but she keeps the vase with Leene's name inscribed. For some reason, she likes the reminder of what she used to be.

–

The next time she visits Lucca, Kid is there with her. She is wearing an apron that's too large tied around her waist, and it's covered with paint stains and grease smudges. There's a bit of oil on the bridge of her nose that she hasn't noticed yet, and she trails after Lucca holding various tools to help – a screw, a small gear, and sometimes a hammer.

“I'm trying now to focus the magic into a single point,” Lucca explains, as they sit around the newest prototype with the hum of machines surrounding them. “The problem is that I can't find a synthesis strong enough right now to act as a conduit without overloading and melting the entire thing.”

It's beautiful, in a way that Nadia will never fully understand.

Lucca taps her chin as all three of them fall into silence. “This was much easier when I was working with materials more suited for this kind of thing.”

“Like Dreamstone,” Nadia says.

“Which would be exactly what I need,” Lucca sighs. “But those channels are closed to us now.”

“You didn't keep the Gate Key?” Nadia asks, and she's both surprised and not, though she can't explain why.

Lucca's mouth purses a bit. She leans in, tightening a screw that only she could see was out of place, and Nadia lets her distract herself for a few minutes.

“It wouldn't be the same anymore,” the other woman finally answers, and Nadia doesn't press; she knows. Without Crono, nothing would be as it was, and neither of them want to go down that path. There's still too much there in the crowded, webbed recesses of her thoughts.

“I'm sorry,” Nadia says. “I never told you that, and I should have.”

Lucca's eyes are bright when she looks up. “I'm sorry, too.”

When Nadia reaches over the prototype for Lucca's hand, she finds warm fingers that squeeze tightly. It's too late, and not quite enough, but it's something.

“I'll keep working,” Lucca says quietly.

“Me, too,” Kid offers, blonde hair sticking up from her pigtails.

Nadia smiles at them both, and hope it looks more real than it feels. “Thank you.”

–

Three weeks later, Nadia is awoken to her bedroom doors opening from the balcony. She is up with alarm before she recognizes the familiar scent of magic and leather.

“What is it?” she asks, because he was on the front lines, and if he is here, the reason is anything but good. There's a tightness in her chest that rings with relief – gratitude that he is alive and unharmed, and selfishness that he has come back – and she pushes it down.

“It's El Nido,” Magus tells her. “Get your council, now.”

“It's the middle of the night,” she manages to sputter.

His hand is on her elbow, insistent. “Viper has pledged his support to Choras. The Dragoons are coming.”

Her mouth goes dry, and she can taste only fear.

–

The other members of the council are bleary-eyed and distrustful, but the Chancellor is in his element.

“This changes everything,” he says, with maps and battle plans spread out on parchment across the tabletop, edges curling up and in. “The numbers, the tactics, even their sea power is bolstered by Viper's support.”

“What are we up against?” Nadia asks.

“The Dragoons are formidable, but they don't come alone,” Magus explains. “Each commands a small platoon of soldiers, with unique abilities and training. Without knowing where they will be, we will have to ready all the troops for each of them.”

Nadia looks to the Chancellor. “Can we counter this?”

“With what we have now?” he asks, and shakes his head. The end of his beard gets stuck in the collar of his tunic, and Nadia cannot look away from it. “Not even with the extra soldiers conscripted from Porre.”

There is a terrible lightness in her head; the roof of the war room has disappeared, and been replaced with a night sky devoid of stars.

“What do we do?” she whispers. “We can't match their forces.”

“This might be the end,” the Chancellor warns.

She can't think of that. She stares down at the lines on the parchment and glares at them until they bleed and ripple, and doesn't notice when her hands have clenched around the edges and crumpled them into balls.

“This is my fault,” she moans.

Magus' hand is at her elbow again. “Your Grace, a word. In private.”

Somehow, she manages to push herself away from the table and look the council members in the eyes. “We reconvene tomorrow. Come ready with any suggestions to counter this – we do not give up.”

It doesn't really matter that the words ring completely hollow.

–

Back in her chambers, Nadia collapses onto the edge of her bed, unable to support her weight any longer. Magus spends several minutes checking the balcony and windows before he decides that they are safe, and they are alone. Then he kneels in front of her on the tiles, reaching for her fingers.

“You must do something,” he says, voice very low. “Or this will end us all.”

She doesn't answer. She doesn't think she is able.

“Why has El Nido become involved?” she whispers. There is a stinging heat at the corners of her eyes, and she tries to will it back. She will not let them have her tears, not now – not ever again. “Why is this happening?”

Magus says nothing.

“After everything we did, I thought we were done,” she continues, staring out at the balcony half-hidden by gently blowing curtains. “We overcame so much, and I used to think that we were invincible. We could do anything. And now, I find myself with nothing but an ever-growing list of the names of those I've killed.”

His hands go to her neck, and for a moment, she thinks that he is reaching for the button at the back of her shift. Instead, his fingers flit over the nape of her neck, and then, abruptly, still.

“Did you sell it?” he asks, and he sounds _angry_ , furious.

“What?” Nadia gasps, and her hands, on reflex, go to her throat, searching. “No. _No_. I would never – no.”

They are so close that she can see his throat bob as he swallows.

“You know that I would never,” she says, even though she knows that he doesn't.

Instead of answering, his hands against hers begin to grow hot. His fingers and palms warm, until they are nearly blistering against her own, and her magic responds without her willing it to. Ice slinks between her fingers and against his skin, hissing and evaporating into steam that rises into the air and curls around both their faces.

His eyes are dark and hooded when he raises his head to meet her gaze.

“Tomorrow,” she says, and her hands go once more to her collarbone, searching for the bauble that she hasn't worn in years.

–

If Lucca is surprised to see Magus with her, she doesn't show it.

“I'm still working on developing a focal point,” she says, as they move through the doorway. “I haven't had the breakthrough yet that would allow-”

“We have a focal point,” Nadia tells her.

“What do you mean?” Lucca asks.

Nadia takes the pendant from her pocket – she hadn't wanted to wear it, because giving it up again after getting used to the comforting weight would have been simply too much to bear. It feels safe, even after all the years of disuse. She knows now what it is and what it means, but it doesn't strip the heirloom of everything it used to represent.

“I can't,” Lucca starts, shaking her head. “You know I can't.”

“They did it once before, didn't they?” Nadia says. “The Mammon Machine used this pendant. You have so much more than they did thousands of years ago – you can do this.”

Lucca's eyes are shining with something unidentifiable when she looks up. “I can't chance that it will break.”

“It won't,” Nadia promises.

Even after they leave, she isn't sure if she was talking about her necklace or herself.

–

But even with Lucca toiling in her lab, Nadia knows it will not be enough – it may, eventually, but not now, with the threat of El Nido and the Dragoons on their doorstep. They need something more immediate.

After the council has debated further expanding the conscription laws, Nadia sits in her room in the darkness for hours until he comes for her. By the time the balcony doors open, the cold has surrounded her and chilled her skin. Somehow, it feels familiar. She wonders if she could simply brush ice from her arms and turn it into a whirlwind.

“I have a request for you,” she tells him, and the shadows cannot wholly hide his frown. “I need you to train me.”

He is silent for several minutes, so long that she is afraid he will leave, until he says, “You cannot go out to the front lines.”

“I can, and I must,” Nadia responds. “You did the same when you were leading the fiends. You were the one that everyone feared the most.”

“I was not a ruler,” he points out, and the lines on his face deepen. “There was no crown they were bowing to. I was simply the one who united them and gave them a purpose. Had I died, someone else would have filled that role, and they would not have mourned.”

He is wrong, but it is the least pressing argument. “I am the only one who can.”

He turns to the windows, fingers pressed against his face, and he stands there for a very long time.

“I need you to train me so that I am ready,” Nadia says, again, softer this time – she had resolve going into the conversation, and now she is losing it.

“You can't die,” he tells her.

“Then you must help me to survive.”

He hisses, low and through his teeth, and it sounds very angry: feral, like a cat. He whips around to face her and she can see the same emotion on his features.

“If you insist on throwing your life away, then do what you must,” he growls. “If you care so little about what you have built and created...”

“That's not what this is!” Nadia cries, but he has already turned and fled to the balcony, and he is gone before she can get another word in.

–

Feeling lost and alone and fearful of the uncertain future – the one she can't change or will to be different while riding across the wind – she goes to Crono's house.

He still has his old wooden practice sword, and he responds happily to her suggestion that they train outside the house. Somehow, his body remembers the moves that his mind does not, and he slips easily back into it. Nadia watches him parry and slash, a kick and a quick jab upwards, wishing that she, too, could fall back into something so quickly.

“Do you know how to use a sword?” Crono asks, and it hurts to hear.

“My family has always had swords made for its kings,” Nadia tells him, “but never its queens. I was never trained in the art of the blade. I was never made for war.”

Crono frowns and looks up at the sun. It's another moment where he almost feels complete again; the part of him that was lost to the tides of time returned, and the spark back in his eyes.

“No,” he muses, quietly, as if to himself. “Not a sword.”

“Crono?” Nadia asks. She leans in.

The moment is gone when he turns towards her again. “Maybe you could still learn. It's never too late, I think.”

She leaves, but not without bidding goodbye to his mother as well, as they are preparing dinner and boiling water. The reminder of Crono's loss is a knot in her belly, but it doesn't hurt as much as it used to. Perhaps it has been long enough that she understands it will never return to the way it was, and no longer needs it to.

Her empty chambers are another matter.

She wraps the silk sheets around herself and curls in, until she is as small as she can get in the bed, swallowed up by the blankets and pillows. For a second, she breathes, and there is nothing around her – no war, no death, nothing but the scent of lavender and cypress trees drifting in from the garden outside.

The lavender reminds her of her mother's perfume, of the bottle her father had always kept. She buries her face into her pillowcase, and loses herself in the memories of him.

–

Two days later, Magus reappears, with Slash and Flea in tow.

–

“This isn't what I asked you to do,” she says, but her feet find her way down to the practice grounds without conscious thought. “I asked _you_ to train me.”

He has barely looked at her since returning, and that, of all things, is what is twisting the hardest in the pit of her stomach right now. The cape he had forgone for years has made its way back to his shoulders, and it's billowing out behind him, keeping her several steps behind to avoid getting caught up in it. He looks much more the Fiendlord than he has since their adventures officially ended, and she isn't sure what to make of the transition.

She stumbles down one of the stone steps, cursing the long drapes of her skirt.

“Magus,” she tries, but is ignored. He moves swiftly until they reach the grounds, where his generals are waiting. How he convinced them to come here, she doesn't know; she is afraid to ask, given the last time she saw them was within Ozzie's Fort, seething with betrayal.

When they stop there, both fiends stare at her with barely disguised annoyance, and she feels smaller than she has in a long time.

“If you insist on being on the front lines, you will need training from all angles,” Magus says, without meeting her gaze. “Your magical abilities used to run strong, but you have let them decay over the years, and they must be built up again. Flea will coach you through that.”

His gloved fingers land on Slash's shoulder. “And despite your time frolicking through time, your battle skills have never been what they could be. Slash will train you in physical combat and weaponry.”

Speechless, Nadia takes in the scene, the crossed arms and set features of the fiends made to be her new teachers, and tries to fill her lungs with several shuddering breaths.

“This isn't what I–“

“You will train with them every morning, before the council meetings begin. In three weeks, I will return to gauge your progress. If I feel that you have not improved enough, you are not joining your soldiers on the field.”

He exits with a sweep of the cape, leaving the three of them alone. It is a long time before either of the fiends speaks.

“Nice gown,” Flea sneers. “Which ball were you planning on attending today?”

Fighting back the rising fury, Nadia restrains her temper enough to reply, “I will return in ten minutes in something more suitable for training.”

–

The fiends are hard masters.

Flea runs her magic dry, until Nadia is shaking with exhaustion and energy depletion, her entire body burning with thirst. She is on the ground and too weak to stand, grasping for anything that could fill the aching absence in her veins, fingers twitching and trembling, and that is when Flea charms her so that her head is woozy and her vision blurred.

When the spell wears off, she finds herself collapsed on the ground with her own hands wrapped around her throat. She chokes when she wrenches them away, gagging, and the magician is above her, leering down and in, braid tumbling over her bare shoulder.

“You've wasted your ability and now you've lost it,” Flea taunts, “and when you are the end of your power, that is when the Dragoons will strike. Give me more, you weak human, even when you have nothing left.”

After that, she must face Slash. She has never been trained with a blade, but he gives her one anyway, and forces her to work through the movements in time increments. Her body, already weak with fatigue, begins to fall apart. She stumbles and drops the sword, hands cramping and useless. When he kicks the back of her leg to edge her towards the weapon again, she drops and retches into the dirt. She can no longer move.

“Pitiful,” he spits, as she is on her side on the dirt struggling just to catch her breath. Her lungs burn; she thinks they might be seared into ash inside her chest. “I thought human royals were supposed to be great warriors to the people, but I see only a pathetic, spoiled little girl.”

They leave her there without help, disappearing into the forest. It is a long time before she can pull herself up, and by that point, she is sobbing – big, wracking sobs that go all the way down to her toes. Everything hurts. She has never felt this level of agony before, not even when they were working their way up the Mountain of Woe or through the twisting hallways of the Black Omen.

Somehow, she makes it to her chambers and collapses on the bed. In an hour, her maid comes to collect her for the council updates.

That night, she does not dream at all, and the next morning, she wakes with heavy pangs in her limbs, mouth dry and head pounding.

She goes back to the practice grounds anyway.

–

Her hands blister and split from the grip of the sword, and she wraps them at night to keep the blood from soaking into her sheets until they scar over with thick, rough callouses.

The magical depletion nearly lands her in a comatose state until her body responds in kind and begins to anticipate it, finding reserves she didn't know she had, and the headaches gradually lessen into something she can stand.

Nights are nothing but exhaustion, her body too tired to dream; the days are blurs of pain.

–

At the end of three weeks, Magus returns to watch them spar.

Slash begins. Nadia will never be able to beat him, especially not with only three weeks of training, but she can hold her own better, and can parry most of his blows, even when the strongest of them force her to hop backwards to keep her balance. The sword fits easier into her hands, though, and while she is wiping sweat off of her face by the end, she knows she has strength left over.

She is stronger with magic, but Flea is a master of misdirection. Weeks of being surrounded by the fiend's magic has helped Nadia to see the pattern in it, and she can now use the energy the other woman produced to weave her own spells inside it, blowing ice and freezing winds back around the fiend's head.

Magus says nothing until the field test is completely done, and then, merely nods once.

“Acceptable,” he says.

Nadia is full of fury. She stalks towards him and shoves the sheathed blade into his hands, putting as much force behind the action as she can.

“Fuck you,” she rages. “You dumped me here with two fiends who would rather see me dead than stronger and never even bothered to check on how I was doing, for something that I asked you to do because I had _trusted_ you, and now you stand here and smugly tell me that my pain and work is merely _acceptable_. So _fuck you_ , you sniveling bastard, and go back to wherever it is you crawled out of in the first place, for I want nothing more to do with you.”

She does not give him a chance to respond. She goes to the council meeting still in her practice tunic, skin salty and sticky, and does not care about the looks they exchange with one another.

She does not know where the three fiends go, but at the end of the day, the practice grounds are empty, and so is her balcony, and she is glad for it.


End file.
